Like The QueenWhatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content.

1 Comments:

I can identify with your dilemma of saving the good stuff for when your skills are better. I am going through a similar thing - I do not feel that my spinning is improving. Or, maybe, as you say, my critical side is becoming overdeveloped.

Humph. I knit all the way to R’s and much of the way back and in the end I ripped the whole thing out. This is not a happy prospect. In the end I set it down because I subscribe to Mama’s dictum: 3 mistakes and you set it down. This is an old sewing technique she taught me when I was young. When it comes to fiddly, dexterous activities that involve fiber, and possibly scissors, one’s inner pulse must beat in time to the activity. Both she and I are rather weighted on the intuitive side of life and when our inner pulse is off, we can not intellectualize our way out of a problem. We must feel the answer first - and then we can implement it.

But I am wondering if I jinxed the project because I was using the Creative Strands bag I got in PA last month. There was bad juju at that event and perhaps it permeated even such talismans as free tote bags. Hmmm. Better empty that thing toot sweet.

I also plied up the Sugar Maple singles that had been sitting on the bobbin’s for about a year. This is some hand painted merino top I bought at the first KRRetreat back in ‘02. I started spinning it up last summer but set it aside for some other project. Later I just bought more bobbins, but that only let me fill more bobbins, it didn't help me complete any projects. I want to finish some things. So, though there is still more top to make into singles, I plied these to bobbins together. I don’t really like the quality of my spinning from a year ago - though it is not as bad as I thought it would be last week, while filling up that second bobbin. It’s "Eh" quality - shruggable, usable, but not anything I’d brag about. My only regret is that I’ve put so-so spinning into a fiber that had been dyed an absolutely gorgeous color. But hey - it's perfectly acceptable to learn a skill - to practice - with beautiful materials. It's not as if I will never have the opportunity to work with this color merino top again. Heck, I can dye more.

This concept of saving gorgeous things for a moment, or an occasion, or a time when my skill with the medium has become worthy of it’s beauty, while not precisely wrong, is too likely to apply itself to all occasions, moments or eras. It grows out of a mistaken belief in the scarcity of good things. It makes one focus on the flaws of the present at the expense of the perfections. It pushes one beyond critical into knit-picky. It’s creates unmanageable yarn stashes; shameful stockpiles of languishing beauty that serve no purpose beyond, possibly, engendering a sense of wealth. Alas, for me it seldom does even that. Instead, the contents of my SavedForJustTheRightMomentStash gets forgotten, even damaged in storage (this stuff is one of the 4 food groups for bugs). When rediscovered, chagrin and even a little shame, is far more likely to assail me than excitement or a sense of opportunity.

So what is so fabulous about later that it completely trumps now when it comes to being worthy of special? Ahh - I know it’s the P in my EFNP - that open ended Possibility that down the road is Something Better. I have always liked the part of me that sees opportunity up ahead. I am proud that I am a good problem-solver, someone with the creativity to come up with several ways of doing things, a flexible type who can adapt when change thrusts its way into my universe. What I am not so pleased with is this tendency I have to live only for tomorrow - and ignore today. Skimming lightly over the here and now is a useful survival tool when things are crummy but only time will fix them. Making a lifestyle out of it is a tragedy that robs one of the fulfillment of all those tomorrows one had anticipated.

So - the question is - are there some things in my life that I don’t like but have to suck up anyway - or have I slipped into a seriously bad habit of buzzing off on life and need to smack myself up side the head?